The Rescue Plan

The Rhine Alliance's vast encampment had lost its former clamor. It lay dead and silent, like a pig driven into a slaughterhouse, looking around in fear and despair.

The castle to the north stood quietly amid the snowfall, as if nothing happening outside had anything to do with it.

To the south, the Winged Hussars held the choke point leading to Red Waterwheel Village. The wings on the cavalrymen's backs glinted coldly beneath the gloomy sky, and at night they shone like scattered lights, as if the Starlight River flowed across the earth.

To the northeast, the landing army of the King of Suomi had occupied the ruined port. Ships crowded the small pier, a new camp had sprung up to the east, and knights rode enormous white bears around the area.

The Rhine Alliance sent a hundred cavalrymen and three hundred infantrymen to try to strike at the Suomi Bear Cavalry and teach them a lesson. But fifty Bear Cavalry surrounded and annihilated them, drawing a horde of slimes on the verge of hibernation to feed on the remains scattered across the ground.

Kaustov's elite legion, clad in fur coats, blocked the west like a slowly advancing flood of beasts, sealing off the last escape route.

The news that their first attempt to break through the encirclement had failed, and that their supplies were nearly exhausted, had already spread through the camp. The soldiers were ashen-faced, while the nobles clutched their dwindling wine barrels. Morale had hit rock bottom.

Inside the king's tent, the air seemed frozen, heavy enough to suffocate.

Rudolf stood rigid before the massive map table, his face ashen and his eyes vacant.

His fingers moved absently across the map, repeatedly rubbing the markers for the Florensburg camp and Red Waterwheel Village.

Retreat, or hold their